WHEE!!!!!!!!!

 

lots of things to say today!

1st up… wild at heart tracks are out! yay! thank you to saobang2211 for sharing! <3

the pv is in her lj too, but somehow the version i downloaded just now… didn’t finish downloading? or something… re-downloading it now… can't wait to see it! love the retro part where they danced with the miss… the outfit is cute and the dance is energetic and amusing to watch XD

one thing i always feel said when deleting the radio versions of the songs is that… the number of plays is gone :( somehow I'm just a sucker for this kind of small things… just find it nice to see which song i listened to a lot and exactly how much lol…

this time especially… in the short few days since i started liking how can i love, i've played it a whooping 124 times! gosh! that's fast! o.o that's like 8 over hours of listening to that song in… wait… 2 days! wat the….!?!?!?! no wonder i can remember the chorus already :X

yes, somehow i just get really amused to see stats like this. i guess its because I'm a real geek…

2nd: i went out cycling with my friends today, and after that i decided to go orchard and join my parents… since i got there a little early, i decided to check out hmv at somerset 313… (got a fb friend coming to sg from australia tmr, so i checked out the arashi cd prices for her at the same time) since my handphone was somewhat running out of juice, i went to try out the iPhone dock speakers in hmv after that… playing mostly arashi songs of cos. after like 40++ mins of listening, i concluded that the 500SGD Go + Play 2 by Harman/Kardon was the most expensive, but best speaker out of the lot… the panasonic one had good clarity, but the vocals were weak… another brand's one that i can't rem the name of… lacked clarity (for the background sounds) AND had bad sounds for the vocals :X not worth the 400bucks….!

>>>>>ok, before i go on about some audio stuff, i'll talk about what happened 1st… i was like 40 mins into my song listening, when a bunch of 4 girls suddenly came up to me and went 'hi, are you a arashi fan?' to which i happily agreed… and than we exchanged twitter usernames. COOL! never expected to meet other arashi fans like this haha. it was quite funny… one of them was saying she was wondering how come she suddenly heard hmv playing this cool and nice music… than she realized its arashi's how to fly and they came over to find the source… another was wondering if she was playing it on her phone by accident or something haha XD

COOL, next time i have time and visit hmv, i'll be sure to do that again. actually this is the 2nd time i've done it, the previous time when i did it, i was with my sis + her friend… and we were happily playing all sorts of arashi songs too XD but it was a weekday so there were lesser ppl ard. and nope, no arashi fans approached us… (well weekday… the store was almost empty) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ok back to my long rant

WARNING: LONG RANT AHEAD!

was quite a nice experience… apart from a bunch of arashi songs i also played others like Easy, Dreaming, Fast car, and Lemon Tree… Lemon Tree is a nice song, i 1st heard it in primary school… at the start there's a glass breaking kind of sound… and that's good to use as a yardstick for speaker performance… its been really long since i last heard that nice, crystal clear clinging sound… last time in my old house I'd listen to it on the cd player (which had really good sound!) or my dad's wifi system… but nowadays… i only listen to music from my iphone using the standard issue earphones, or occasionally play it on my computer. realized how much i missed that good sound quality… even the tones at the start of the song is different/tweaked in the other lousier players…!

why am i using the iPhone standard issue earphones? 1) the sound quality is good. its no doubt NOT the best in the market, but its decent 2) I'm often listening to songs outside, on the noisy train, or in the even noisier shopping centers. sound quality? I'd just be glad if i can hear the song above all that din 3) i don't like those in the ear kind of earphones. somehow they feel a little weird (i guess i can get used to that but…)… and while its great that it cancels out noise… that's also the bad thing. It’s a little dangerous when you are walking around or crossing the road w/o being able to hear what's going on outside at all… so yeah… (and since i tend to daydream and space out so much) 4) its decently priced… yeah, i spoil my earphones really fast, they last like about a year, so at 50 bucks i get decent quality - quality assured! (i see a lot of earphones in the 30-40+ price range outside anyway, or even more expensive), w/o having to spend a ridiculous amount (like 3 digit numbers) on something that i'll spoil rather fast. 5) i like and use the remote a lot… like to change songs or adjust the volumes… esp to change songs. not many earphones out there with remotes - if they do have remotes, they are like extremely expensive. saw one NOT THAT ex earphones during the IT show… was like 60+ or 70+ (note: still more ex than the apple ones), but the quality and make of the earphone/remote was quite bad… :S so even though my dad wanted to get it for me, i couldn’t bear to have him spend that much money on a lousy looking piece of earphones :X

so yeah, although i do want to get a better pair of earphones, most of them are WAY too pricey IMO… well i didn’t have enough time to test out the earphones in hmv today… maybe next time. But i did get this nice panasonic headphones at an IT show like… 2 years back? its cheap (like 40+?) but really good… very strong base, clear sound and superb noise canceling (it made the ultra noisy IT fair hall become completely silent, so what do ya think?). The only thing is that its too big for my to carry around, and its somewhat tight and not very comfortable to wear for long periods of time (or maybe I'm not used to it)… previously wore it for a few hours w/o adjusting properly… ended up my ear was somehow trapped under the headphones and it really ached for a long time after that :X so it wasn’t till recently that i started using it properly… cos using the iPhone earphones for too long can cause my ear to get really painful at times.

guess I'm getting more used to wearing the headphones now… and yes it plays lemon tree in the 'right' tone/way. shall try and use it more often from now on...

a sound system would indeed be good… actually my dad did buy me a good sound system like when i was in… (can't remember when… too long ago!)… but it plays by usb or cd (at that time mp3 players just came out, and the standard sizes were like… 256mb so yeah, that's really eons ago right?)… and i hardly listened to it so it got moved to my parents room a long time ago - and they hardly listen to it either… i can move it back anytime, but the thing is… almost every time when i want to listen to music, its like at 12mn… and since the aircon isn't working i can't like close the windows and draw and curtains and play my music :X sighs.

should occasionally play music with the hifi system in the living room too, but i don't like working in the living room and my parents don't quite like the music me and my sis likes so… :X

sighs… no space on my phone and comp, else I'd like to rip all the classical music CDs that my dad has too… he's got TONS of them cos he was really into classical music + hifi systems last time. not that he isn't now, but he just doesn’t have the time.

(wow, the headphones are really good, like as good as that 500buck speaker, or even better…)

last time me + my sis + her friend tried out the headphones/earphones in hmv… none of them were as good as this pair lol… so that made me really doubt the quality of earphones/headphones out in the market. like those were designed more for looks and stuff than really listening to music… we were testing with classical music btw… my sister listens to classics a lot… i don't, at least because i don't have space to put them in my comp now :S used to listen to it a lot when i was young cos my dad will be blasting it over his hifi system.

hmm, why all these talk about audio stuff today? i was just reading an article about lossless audio quality VS the compressed versions like mp3 formats… and since I'm completing my collection of arashi songs and i know someone's ripping the CDs in lossless format, I'm wondering if i should download those… one thing is that the metadata like plays will be 'lost' when i switch to a new version… the other is that it'll take up more space… and than the most important question is… do i really need such a good quality song? maybe… or maybe not. most of the time I'm listening outside, so with all the crap noise you can't hear a diff… and than I'm not sure if my iPhone earphones are even good enough to play the difference… and than i when I'm listening to songs, I'm doing other stuff too, like typing this entry or reading some paper or doing some work or playing some games. my attention is elsewhere rather than the song… if I'm engrossed in my work/thoughts, i might not even notice what song I'm listening to anymore… so why the better version when i won't even notice a difference?

of cos after reading the article i was also curious… can i even TELL the difference? with the influence from my dad, i am more sensitive to sounds than an average person (at least i hope so), but i can't quite claim myself to be a true audiophile… so yeah… what i've been doing so far if i download a copy of the song i already have is to play the start and see if there's any difference… some of them its easy to tell that the quality is better, some sound identical… even the number of seconds the song lasts for is identical… often I'd see 1 sec diff in the length of the tracks - indicating that the track is evidently from a different source (some can be cos of singles VS album difference too). if the new one is better, that i'll delete the old one, but if it’s the same I'd obviously keep the old one...

hmm i still have not gotten my better quality of the energy song track… downloaded the lossless version and indeed it is clear as a gem but… somehow the album was ripped as 1 track that lasts for 5x minutes… so i'll have to cut the song out myself :S (and in doing so i might just destroy the nice quality???)

worst still is that i've already finished downloading all the albums… do i want to redownload everything in lossless again? and than… do i still have apps to sacrifice for space to put my songs? haiz...

EDIT: ok, i've decided to re-dl all the albums i recently downloaded… since those were all 192kbps :S...

arghs… i'll have to xfer all the lyrics too...

 

meh… enough rambling… i'll stop here now!